What Constitutes a Heritage Designated Property in London?

Did you know that there are approximately 3,900 buildings listed as Heritage Designated Properties in the city of London? And this is only 3% of the structures that can potentially have the designation. Downtown, old east, old north, and old south are where most of the heritage designated properties can be found.

In a Heritage Designated property, there are certain criteria based on its architecture, history and context that needs to be followed in order to be designated heritage status. There is the need for special treatment of the property under different acts such as the Planning Act, the Ontario Heritage Act, the Ontario Building Code and specific city policies under demolition. Designated properties must have permission from the city if certain areas of the building are planned to be altered in any way.

There are various priority levels which indicate the heritage value:

Priority 1 – London’s most important heritage structures and merit designation under Part IV (Section 29) of the Ontario Heritage Act. Landmark buildings, buildings in pristine condition, but also lesser known structures with major architectural/historical significance.

Priority 2 – buildings merit evaluation for designation under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act. They have significant architectural and/or historic value.

Priority 3 – Although not often worthy of a designation on its own, buildings in this priority category may merit designation as part of a group of buildings designated under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act or as part of a Heritage Conservation District.

Priority 9 – This priority level is restricted to buildings within a Heritage Conservation District. Individually these buildings would have little or no heritage value on their own.

CityMap under the london.ca website can be used to identify where these designated properties reside (along with London’s Heritage Conservation Districts), find specific data for each individual property such as:

Priority Ranking
Year built (if known)
Architectural Style
By-law Number to show Designation under the Ontario Heritage Act view the areas of traditional neighbourhoods.